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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 20 April 2022 12:30 am Last season, as you may not wish to recall, Francisco Lindor had a rather rough introduction to New York: a batting average stuck below the Mendoza line until June; a frustrating run of injuries; an embarrassing public disagreement with his double-play partner that it was instantly obvious had nothing to do with furry four-footed creatures, no matter how much a smiling Lindor tried to sell it. That double-play partner, Jeff McNeil, saw his offensive production crater, going from much-admired line-drive hitter to baffled and baffling enigma. As for Max Scherzer, he was in Washington, where we hoped we encountered him and his filthy arsenal of pitches and his bulldog demeanor as infrequently as possible.
A year later, Scherzer is somehow here, having joined Lindor and McNeil — who sure look a lot happier. As do we all, suddenly.
The Mets came into a chilly Tuesday afternoon with a 7-3 record, but one amassed against teams whose prospects ranged from “flawed” to “pathetic.” The San Francisco Giants promised a sterner test, boasting a 7-2 record and coming off a season in which they shocked everyone, possibly including themselves, by winning 107 games.
What a difference 10 hours or so can make. The Mets won both ends of a doubleheader, meaning they’ve now beaten San Francisco more often in 2022 than they did in the entirety of 2021. They’re 9-3 and warnings about flight and proximity to the sun seem in order.
The afternoon didn’t start promisingly, as the Giants took a 4-1 lead against a suddenly mortal Tylor Megill, with the last two runs coming off the bat of Brandon Crawford in a situation where the Mets might have opted to pitch to Thairo Estrada instead. But Megill prevented further harm, and in the fifth the Mets erupted, with doubles from James McCann (???!!!), McNeil and Lindor tying the game. Seth Lugo looked shaky again but escaped in the eighth, slipping a fastball past Jason Vosler. The Mets looked like they had a wild Camilo Doval beaten in the ninth, but the young Giant found his slider in the nick of time, fanning Travis Jankowski and Dom Smith.
On to the 10th, and the first ludicrous Manfred men of the season. It looked like the Giants would draw blood in the top of the inning, as Lindor threw wide of first and pulled Pete Alonso off the bag, turning the third out into an error and a run scored. But hold the phone, or rather get an umpire onto said headset to ring up Chelsea. The Mets challenged the call, and the briefest look at the replay showed they’d been right to do so, as Alonso had contorted himself into an unlikely shape that ended with one toe just touching the base. “BIG STRETCH!” I hollered at the TV, which I suppose made Alonso an honorary housecat. He came off the field hooting with the joy you’d expect from a man making his case to be more than a DH — and a few minutes later Lindor completed a rapid ascent from possible goat to hero, lashing a ball to right-center that brought home the Mets’ own Manfred man, the just-returned Brandon Nimmo.
They’d won, 5-4, and that was just the matinee!
The nightcap belonged to the new guy, Mr. Scherzer of the heterochromatic eyes and ferocious mien. I’ve watched Scherzer for years, even seen him up close a time or two — most notably from the stands as he no-hit the Mets at the tail end of the 2015 season. (I was also in attendance for Chris Heston‘s no-no that June, a distinction I’d rather not repeat.) But it still seems faintly astonishing that he now wears our livery, transformed with the stroke of a pen on a checkbook from highly respected enemy to pinch-me ally.
Scherzer has that air of meanness common to great power pitchers from Seaver to Santana, a tunnel vision that’s admirable and a little scary to see in action. The wrinkle he adds is a slightly demented restlessness: Where most aces sit in the dugout fixing the field with a stony stare, Scherzer prefers to pace up and down in the dugout, cap off, looking not unlike an unmade bed. His frankly terrible hair does nothing to hide his encroaching male pattern baldness, yet it’s impossible to imagine Scherzer conceivably giving a rat’s ass about something so trivial — if he’s doing something important, he’ll have a baseball cap on, right?
On Tuesday night he was indeed doing something important — blitzing the Giants. He had all five of the pitches in his Saberhagenesque arsenal working, and as he rolled along the Giants hitters trudged up to their appointments with him bearing an air of hangdog disconsolation. You could see them wondering what terrible thing Scherzer was going to subject them to this time and then trudging away once said terrible thing had been revealed, slightly sadder and not particularly wiser.
Scherzer entered the sixth without allowing a hit, got the first two Giants in that inning and then seemed to tire, losing his velocity and location and walking two. Darin Ruf then ended the suspense with a single spanked to left — a mild relief, perhaps. Beyond the fact that it’s April and Scherzer’s debut was delayed by a balky hamstring, the Mets may well need the bullets in that extraordinary arm later in the season.
Anyway, the Mets were up 3-1 and Scherzer had done more than enough, but he came back out in the seventh and put an exclamation point on his night, with his 102nd pitch an absolutely evil 0-2 changeup that Steven Duggar watched in despair as he became Scherzer’s 10th strikeout of the ninth. Drew Smith survived an encounter with Mike Yastrzemski with an assist from the April wind, Trevor May looked the best he has all year, and the Mets had won again.
They won’t do that every night, alas. There will be moments when toes slide slightly off bases instead of adhering to them, and balls spanked into the gap get plucked out of the air, and even aces wind up stuck with bad hands. But worry about that when we have to — for now, enjoy Lindor hitting .310 and McNeil looking dangerous again and Alonso imitating the world’s gallumphing-est ballet dancer and Scherzer pacing and pacing until someone tells him he can escape the dugout again and inflict new cruelties on the opposition. Baseball can be exasperating and mean. We all know that. What we forget sometimes is that you’re allowed to smile and say silly things when baseball’s mild and kind.
by Greg Prince on 17 April 2022 7:43 pm Three paces that would be nice to keep up:
1) If the Mets go 7-3 fifteen more times (105-45) and they’ll be 112-48 with two games to go — and I probably won’t sweat the final two games too much.
2) If Pete Alonso matches his career total of 109 home runs six more times (654), he’ll pass Barry Bonds.
3) If the starters continue to pitch like a many-armed Jacob deGrom, Jacob deGrom would make a helluva middle reliever once he’s healthy.
When most things are going well, carried away is the way to go, if only in one’s head, if only before the San Francisco Giants — 114-59 in regular-season play since the dawn of 2021 — come to town. They may provide a stiffer test than the Nationals, Phillies and Diamondbacks have to this point. Conversely, the Giants have to play the Mets, who not only overcame a stiff wind Sunday, but threw caution to the wind and lived to tell about it.
Early on, when most everything’s been going well, a couple of not-quites have gotten in the way of presumably unattainable Metsian perfection. There’ve been a few instances of baserunners being aggressive and getting thrown out and we’ve seen some relievers come back out for that extra batter or more and be burned for it.
So how did the Mets succeed Sunday? By running the bases aggressively, and with a one-inning bullpen guy sticking around for two. It all worked.
Pete Alonso, before icing the chilly game at Citi Field with a seventh-inning home run that didn’t acknowledge the wind, ran in a gust of fury from first to home on Eduardo Escobar’s one-out double in the sixth. Pete forced a less than ideal throw from right field and trotted home, while Escobar, to whom speed comes more naturally, took third. Up 1-0 in the sixth, Escobar would move up to second when Dom Smith walked — against authenticated Shea-used lefty Oliver Perez — and score via J.D. Davis’s pinch-single. James McCann’s subsequent flyout, the second out of the inning, came in handy as Smith had zipped to third on Davis’s hit.
Now it’s 3-0 and about to be even more fun, though no runs would be generated in the extension of that sixth-inning good time. The Diamondbacks decided Dom left third too soon, potentially negating McCann’s sac fly. That he didn’t, and almost nobody ever does, didn’t matter. They were gonna put the appeal play on. Ollie stepped off the rubber, and…he’s got J.D. stealing second to contend with.
Except he doesn’t, because his job in that moment is to throw to third to theoretically retroactively nail Dom.
Except he’s distracted by J.D., who Buck Showalter has sent to second precisely to completely distract Perez. Had Perez picked off J.D., he of the five career stolen bases in five major league seasons, so be it, figured Buck. It would have been the third out of the sixth, but the important thing was the appeal play was off the instant Ollie didn’t throw to third, and therefore Smith’s run would count regardless of J.D.’s fate.
As it happened, Dom didn’t leave third too soon.
Also as it happened, J.D. stole second.
One more happening: Ollie got Luis Guillorme for the next out, stranding Davis, but the real happening at the end of an aggressively run inning was Buck made sure to protect that third run, the one Smith scored. That third run for a third out was a trade Buck would make in the time it took Frank Cashen to say yes to swapping Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey for Keith Hernandez.
Got all that? Buck did. The Mets did. Ol’ pal Ollie was flustered. The twenty-year veteran and reigning LAMSA or Longest Ago Met Still Active didn’t seem to know what exactly was going on, which was OK, because a) nobody at first glance seemed to understand this baseball version of the tuck rule (something that can’t possibly seem right but is — call it the Buck rule); and b) Buck knew and made sure his players knew exactly what was going on.
The Mets outsmarting the opposition. We could get used to that.
We could also get used to this starting pitching that has carried the Mets away toward their 7-3 record. The combined ERA of everybody who has taken the ball to begin a game is 1.07 through ten games. DeGrom, whose presence may be sorely missed but whose absence hasn’t yet represented a debilitating factor, put up an ERA of 1.08 in fifteen starts last year. It was David Peterson’s turn to give up nothing on Sunday, and he was exactly as miserly as he needed to be. Four-and-a-third innings pitched, no runs allowed. Stingy starting is apparently contagious.
Once the Mets had that 3-0 lead, Chasen Shreve, nominally a lefty specialist, was the pitcher of record, having thrown a perfect top of the sixth. Showalter stayed with him for the top of the seventh. Some of those dreaded ups/downs have seemed to go an up too far, as in, “Why is Shreve getting another inning?” turning into “I knew I was right to moan about getting Shreve getting another inning?” Like Joey Cora waving runners along, Buck isn’t deterred by our intermittent bleats of frustration. Shreve pitched a perfect second inning. It may not always work. On Sunday, en route to a 5-0 win — bolstered by Alonso’s two-run homer in the seventh and preserved by shutout frames from Drew Smith and Edwin Diaz plus a clutch two-thirds provided in the fifth by Trevor Williams — it did. Precedent won’t scare off this manager until he’s convinced it proves something.
The Mets’ 7-3 start is valuable in that four more games have been won rather than lost. Just keep going when the eleventh game begins. Easier said than done? We’re 7-3. That also comes off the tongue with ease.
by Jason Fry on 16 April 2022 11:32 pm On Saturday the Mets lost an oddly desultory affair to the Diamondbacks, 3-2. The ingredients were all there for yet another walk-on-air game: pregame honors for Gil Hodges, pleasant weather, a new statue to admire (haven’t seen it yet but can’t wait), and a big revved-up crowd eager to celebrate.
But having all the ingredients doesn’t ensure that the souffle won’t fall. The Mets and D’Backs ground along scoreless, which was equal parts heartening (Carlos Carrasco looks great!) and dis- (we can’t score a run against freaking Zac Gallen?), until Seth Lugo gave up a two-run homer to nonslugger Sergio Alcantara, followed by a run-scoring double by Ketel Marte. The Mets fought back with a two-run homer by Starling Marte, but it wasn’t enough, particularly not with Mark Melancon on the hill in the ninth. Melancon’s uniform seems to change every year, but the arsenal is the same cruel metronome — cutters on hitters’ hands and curves that dive out of the strike zone, generally with dispiriting effect.
It was one of those games that felt like a slow-moving avalanche that would eventually turn in the Mets’ favor — surely those Arizona outfielders would stop staggering under balls at the last moment to safely cradle them, and surely the Mets bats would discover their recent potency with this latest reliever — except then the hour was late and the avalanche somehow hadn’t happened and then the game was over and so that was definitely the case.
Blame? If I were determined to apportion some, I suppose I could craft an anguished paragraph about how Lugo has looked crummy in two out of his three most recent outings. I could offer you a pitch-by-pitch breakdown to decry how Pete Alonso came to the plate after a four-pitch walk and practically jumped out of his shoes at a pitch he couldn’t drive, producing a fatal double play.
Neither of those airings of grievances would be wrong — Lugo did indisputably look lousy and Pete was pretty obviously overeager. It’s more that it’s so early that I’m suspicious of the context — of any context. In April we’re filling in big patterns via extrapolation from a handful of dots, and a lot of those perceived patterns will be obviously just static by May. Joely Rodriguez looked awful in his first couple of Met outings but was effective today, stuck with the loss through no particular fault of his own. Alonso has been an RBI machine in the early going, even if he hit an empty chamber when needed today. Lugo has enough of a track record that he deserves more than to be discarded before Tax Day. Carrasco’s first two outings have been heartening, but let’s see him a few more times before we declare that he’s healthy and all is well.
It’s a marathon, yet we’re out here sprinting, sweating like sprinkler heads and gasping with our tongues hanging out of our mouths. I know that’s hard to resist when it’s a beautiful day and everyone around you is hooting and hollering. But it’s no way to finish the race. Pace yourself. Take water breaks. Stick with the pack. We’ve got a long way to go and a lot to see — and no idea what scenery lies ahead.
by Greg Prince on 15 April 2022 11:51 pm Technically, the win in the game that commenced the National League season in New York went to Chris Bassitt. Not so technically, actually. Chris, No. 40 in the common guise of No. 42, gave the Mets six superb innings, and when a Mets starting pitcher is backed by sufficient offense, that generally means the starting pitcher who has pitched superbly is in line for a win. The 2022 Mets are suddenly showing a knack for sufficiently offending opposing pitchers. Just ask Zach Davies and Caleb Smith of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The home team in Friday’s Home Opener did not lack for runs. Three Mets — the aptly first-named Robinson Cano, Francisco Lindor and Starling Marte — produced four homers, with Lindor choosing to smack one from each side of the plate. Among them, the power trio knocked in seven runs. The Met most closely identified with crowd-pleasing home runs, Pete Alonso, satisfied 43,820 with a pair of run-scoring sac flies. Eduardo Escobar chipped in an RBI double as well.
Travis Jankowski likely wasn’t going to be in the lineup, but bench coach Glenn Sherlock wasn’t planning on a) testing positive for COVID-19 and b) coming into close contact with Brandon Nimmo and Mark Canha. Sherlock ended up not coaching and Nimmo and Canha were shuttled to the IL. Jankowski got a start in center, collected three hits and scored one of the Mets’ ten tallies that supported Bassitt and three relievers. The sunniest of baseball afternoons give credence to the adage that when it doesn’t rain, it pours runs.
Because of positive tests that eliminated a pair of outfielders from Buck Showalter’s finely honed plans, not only did Jankowski get a chance to shine, but Nick Plummer suddenly if tentatively owned a roster spot (as did potential next Recidivist Met Matt Reynolds). With a gargantuan lead safeguarding the ninth inning, Showalter allowed Plummer, misspelled by SNY as “PLUMBER” in the pregame introductions, the pleasure of making his MLB debut on defense. Nick thus notched his name (PLUMMER) in Metropolitan annals as the 1,162nd player in team history. His uniform number, you might have guessed, was 42. We’ll learn his “real” digits should he stick around one more day.
Yes, on April 15 everybody wore 42, for the only reason you’d do away with individual numerical identity: to honor the transcendent contributions of Jackie Robinson. Cano, who wears 24 because 42 usually isn’t available, had to love it; he was named Robinson because of Jackie. Jankowski, despite the circumstances that pushed him forward, couldn’t have minded — three hits in four unexpected at-bats look great however they’re cross-referenced. Chasen Shreve, at last a home team Mets pitcher pitching in front of Mets fans rather than the cardboard cutouts who stayed notoriously silent throughout his stint as a 2020 Met, was probably so gratified by the encouraging noise made by tens of thousands of friendly voices that he didn’t worry at all about his number (or NUMMER).
 When uniform numbers go missing. For the 75th anniversary of Robinson’s precedent-shattering debut in Brooklyn, MLB decided a blue 42 on players’ backs would be de rigueur for every team, with no numbers on the front for any team. Though it wasn’t intentional, there was an inherent turn-back-the-clock element to the Jackie look for our side. The Mets wore no numbers on the fronts of their pinstriped jerseys from 1962 through 1964. From 1965 forward, the pins have always come numerically enhanced, backs and fronts, with one lone pre-Friday exception that I can recall. On August 30, 1992, the Mets revived their ancient NNOF practice for a Nostalgia Night celebration at Shea Stadium, commemorating their 30th anniversary. They wore 1962 throwbacks, as did the visiting Reds. Bobby Bonilla beat Rob Dibble with a walkoff dinger. As fans coast-to-coast tuned into ESPN witnessed, Dibble disgustedly tore his vintage vest from his torso and left it for somebody else to clean up.
Steve Cohen might relate to the additional task that faced Pete Flynn’s grounds crew that Sunday night. The Mets were a bit of a mess when they became his, and it fell to him to make things more presentable. I don’t know that it was the very first thing he did when he decided some sprucing up of his new property was due, but he clearly took care not long after taking the keys from the previous owners to think about remaking the landscape outside Citi Field.
Specifically, he thought a ten-foot statue would look, oh, Terrific right over…there. That’s the spot — more or less opposite the original Home Run Apple.
 Tom is here. The Apple and Tom Seaver, destined to essentially flank the pathway by which so many mass transit-riding and Roosevelt Avenue-parking fans file into Robinson’s Rotunda, theoretically make strange gatefellows. Seaver was traded by an even worse ownership than the one that preceded Cohen’s in 1977. The Apple was installed beyond the right-center field fence by the next iteration of upper management in 1981. The top hat that housed it read “Mets Magic,” which made sense in the context of the advertising that dared to declare the Magic was Back in 1980 (as the campaign faded from relevancy, the text was switched to HOME RUN in 1984, but the Magically themed top hat never went away). The Franchise and the fruit only co-existed at Shea Stadium for one season, during Seaver 2.0 in 1983. Since the Apple only elevated when a Met went yard, it probably wouldn’t have bothered Tom to know someday that very same Apple would always stick up behind him, as if to imply he’d just given up a long one to Terry Puhl. I suspect the juxtaposition of his iconic pitching motion and produce symbolizing the conquest of pitching would probably make the pitcher laugh…and if Tom Seaver had laughed, he would have cackled.
On Friday morning, a couple of hours before No. 42 for the Mets threw the first pitch to No. 42 of the Diamondbacks, we all saw how inspired that choice of statuary really was. Then again, if you’re starting a Home Opener with No. 41, it’s hard to go wrong. Tom Seaver started eight Home Openers in his Mets career. The Mets won seven of them. Tom got the W in six of them.
You may have heard of “the Tom Seaver statue” dating back to all the seasons it could have fronted the Mets’ ballpark but didn’t. Late in the tenure of the previous ownership, the former caretakers of the organization let us know they’d put the statue on order. Mighty sporting of them, with the greatest Met the Mets had ever known or will ever know in no condition to ever see the concept become reality. In March of 2019, Tom Seaver’s family informed his legions of fans that Tom wasn’t doing well enough to be out and about any longer. In June of 2019, the previous ownership announced the statue was in development. Nice timing.
Seaver died late in the summer of 2020, about two months before Cohen took over as owner. I’d like to believe the first call Cohen made once he figured out how to get an outside line was to sculptor William Behrends to see how Big Tom was coming. The second call in my dream scenario was to the offices of Seaver Vineyards to make certain Nancy Seaver would be on hand for the unveiling when the statue arrived.
Big Tom and the big day converged at last, and Nancy, in the company of her daughters Sarah and Anne, along with a flock of Franchise family members, was there to greet both. Nancy Seaver used to be at Shea all the time when Tom pitched. They were a matched set. You grew up in New York as a Mets fan and you knew them both. You idolized one. You acknowledged the pair. Maybe you didn’t think about Nancy beyond realizing you knew the name of your favorite baseball player’s wife, but she was a constant. The rock of the operation, you got the feeling. Tom went out and racked up strikeouts and shutouts. Nancy kept the enterprise going. You saw her in the yearbook. You revisited the footage from the World Series where she was resplendent in her trademark tam o’ shanter. You respected them as an entity. The Seavers.
 The Seavers. That statue Behrends sculpted — every bit as awe-inspiring as No. 41 himself — should have been unveiled in the presence of The Seavers. Tom should have looked slightly embarrassed by all the fuss, while Nancy should have reminded him, quietly but firmly, no, Tom, you deserve it, you earned it. The ballpark at whose front door it now resides opened in 2009. Tom Seaver visited in 2009. And 2010. And kept coming back until 2013. I don’t know what William Beherends’s schedule was in the years leading up to the opening of Citi Field, but I’m guessing he could have carved out time for a commission of this nature had he been contacted when Tom Seaver was alive and well.
Water under Shea Bridge, one supposes. The important thing is there is a statue of Tom Seaver outside the park where the Mets play, it is magnificent, and it stands tall for every Mets fan to admire. All 3,200 pounds and 311 wins of it. It’s even got the right knee where the right knee is supposed to be. The ideal proposed in this space in 2006 — when we go to games, we can meet by The Knee…the lovingly sculpted joint with the trademark splotch of dirt that Seaver absorbed every time he went into that perfect motion — has at last come to pass.
So has the widely held desire that Nancy Seaver would fly east to see it. She wasn’t here when they rechristened 126th Street Seaver Way. Sarah was here. So was Anne. Tom couldn’t make it by then, and Nancy wasn’t going to leave her husband alone in Calistoga. But one didn’t have to be a certified Seaverologist to infer Nancy wasn’t too happy with the Mets for not having already put up that statue. The street name was a grand gesture in the interim. That took too long, too.
Friday morning, all was forgiven. It was the era of Steve Cohen. It was the era of the larger-than-life statue of the larger-than-life Met. It was the era when Nancy Seaver returned to Queens, every bit the “Mets royalty” master of ceremonies Howie Rose labeled her. Watching her and listening to her was more than making the reacquaintance of a public figure from a prior age. For all the Seaver kids and grandkids who came to Citi Field in 2019 and were back again, Nancy was…Nancy. Of Tom and Nancy. Only Nancy could elegantly slice through the Flushing winds, battle her way to the podium and address the Franchise as he now stands. Prefacing her remarks of gratitude to the crowd, she spoke one-to-41 with Tom.
She was talking to a statue, but she was talking to the love of her life, and she let us eavesdrop. Tom Seaver is the love of our life every bit as much as he is hers. We all spent more than half-a-century together, fifty-plus years lifting each other up, rooting each other on. “Hello, Tom,” Nancy said on Mets Plaza. “It’s so nice to have you here where you belong.”
Due statistical respect to Chris Bassitt, the 10-3 win for the Home Opener this year has to be assigned as it was on so many Opening Days in the Met past. Put it in the books as another W for Seaver.
She deserves it, she earned it.
by Greg Prince on 14 April 2022 12:42 pm “You gotta believe,” you may have heard once or twice in your life over these past 49 years. And you really do, especially in April. If you’re giving up this soon, it’s a long May through September in front of you. Yet here in the early won-lost portion of the season, when records are instantly recognizable to me in terms of Mets clubs who’ve had them before, I can remember not necessarily wrapping my doubts in a reassuring cloak of belief because, well, as much as you gotta believe, you also gotta believe what you’re trying to believe.
For instance, when the Mets won their first three games of this season, I remembered they won their first three games of the season ten years ago. I didn’t really believe in the 2012 New York Mets three games in. I believed I liked they were 3-0 and I hoped it was indicative of success over the next 159 games, but I didn’t expect much. Some years are like that. Some years, if you’re lucky, your expectations are dashed for the better. For a while, the 2012 Mets were outrunning what was expected of them. I barely budged from my certainty that it was all illusory and temporary. As they approached the All-Star break in still pretty good shape, I allowed to myself that maybe there was something there.
There wasn’t. The 2012 Mets, quick break from the gate notwithstanding, dropped off the face of the playoff race before July turned to August and finished 74-88. I never really got my hopes up, thus I didn’t feel much of a thud when the team crashed to where they were originally expected to land.
Other than the 3-0 and now 5-2 starts, I don’t know what else the 2022 Mets have in common with the 2012 Mets or any other Mets club that came before. We’ve only seen seven games from this edition. One road trip down, everything else to go. But I do know I expect good things.
How good, I’m not certain. Good, certainly.
This 5-2 Mets team is feeding into my expectations and my belief. A bounty of baseball spreads out before us. How can you not want to look forward to more? So what if they can’t go 162-0? They can go 160-2! Should clear horizons turn to abyss, as the preliminarily promising seasons of 20, 30 and 40 years ago did — we had high or at least high-ish expectations entering 1982, 1992 and 2002, all of which were not so much dashed as detonated — then we can revisit the process of raising one’s hopes next April. For now, these Mets who were supposed to be a damn sight better than they were last year are clearly a damn sight better, and perhaps then some.
After their finale in Philadelphia, they’re 5-2. If that itself does not provide compelling proof (it’s only seven games) perhaps those who’ve engineered the club’s winning ways to date can give us reason to believe and expect, expect and believe.
On the seventh day, corresponding with the fifth win, there was Max Scherzer. You’ve heard of him. He’s a New York Met now, with two starts under his belt. The results have been quite Scherzerian in that the team he pitches for, which is now the New York Mets (seems worth repeating at every turn), won. Scherzer went only five, with a lot of pitches in the first, but he gave up only one run. The one run he seemed to take personally, like he swore to himself that he’ll never let it happen again. You’re gonna bet against Max’s interior monologue? Because if you are, I’m sure MLB has an app to enable you.
There was also Pete Alonso, another Met with whom I’ll wager you’re familiar. Alonso matched Scherzer’s innings with runs batted in: five, three of them on a back-breaking home run, at least before a few Mets relievers attempted reconstructive surgery on the Phillies’ spine. Alonso DH’d on Wednesday afternoon. I worry about Pete with all that extra time on his hands during defensive innings. I picture legitimate businessman Tony Soprano planting himself at Barone Sanitation on advice of counsel in order to keep himself out of trouble and not responding well to remaining in what amounts to captivity for eight hours a day. Will Pete create a basketball pool? (MLB would probably enable that, too.) Get a little too friendly with the office staff? Develop a rash? Or will he just keep his head in the game despite not having a glove on his hand? His bat spoke volumes to the affirmative.
There were and are the Black Friday Three: Starling Marte, Eduardo Escobar and Mark Canha, a collective I will someday de-link and treat as individuals, but for now, I lovingly lump them together since they all signed with the Mets amid the same post-Thanksgiving shopping spree and, in their new team’s first seven games, have proven a bargain. Canha’s on-base percentage is .500, Escobar’s a tick below that at .481. If they’re your benchmarks, please update your cliché to, “Remember, in baseball, even the best players fail approximately half the time.” Although he hasn’t reached base nearly as often, Marte seems to be doing everything else. He’s brought speed to the bases and an arm to right field, having legged out a critical run in the fourth after cutting down a potential opposition double in the second. Marte gives off the aura of knowing what he’s doing on the diamond and actually doing it. You don’t always get that combination.
The Mets still have Brandon Nimmo, who is tied with Alonso for the team lead in homers with two; they still have Francisco Lindor, whose hustle on a would-be ground ball double play kept alive the sixth so it could continue on to Pete’s three-run dinger. And they have Edwin Diaz as the firewall of a bullpen that wasn’t keen on not immolating a segment of a seven-run lead. Sugar managed to not blow the remaining four-run advantage when he entered in the ninth…which sounds like damnation with faint praise, but in shallow Citizens Bank Bandbox, every out is deeply appreciated.
The Mets also absorbed three additional bruises from being hit by pitches on Wednesday. Nobody had to be removed out of an abundance of caution and no mounds needed charging. Still, it’s not a positive development when your team has more HBPs (10) than games played. Also, the post-Scherzer, pre-handshakes portion of the pitching staff is still, generously speaking, a work in progress. Diaz did Diaz. Lugo was sharp. Reid-Foley, Rodriguez and Ottavino weren’t. Buck Showalter’s still calculating who is capable of doing what when. It’s not something he could truly know in advance and it wasn’t something that was able to be addressed en masse during this briefest of Spring Trainings. Prefab bullpens are hard to come by, what with all the supply chain issues. Since Clayton Kershaw wasn’t doing anything Wednesday afternoon once he’d thrown seven perfect innings, you’d figure Steve Cohen could’ve sent a plane to Minneapolis to hire him for the rest of the day. That may not jibe with any of the most recent spate of rules changes, however.
Met imperfections aside, we can now count a 9-6 win to end the road trip; a 5-2 record on the road; a Home Opener on deck; and expectations of a team that’s supposed to be good being so far met. You don’t gotta believe, but you might as well.
When the Mets come home on Friday, they’ll be starting their fourteenth season at Citi Field. Where the time has gone and how the suddenly no longer “new” ballpark has held up for thirteen years is the main topic on the latest episode of National League Town, which you can listen to here or wherever you take your podcasts.
by Jason Fry on 12 April 2022 11:44 pm The first week of baseball is nearly always the same: a season’s emotional journey in miniature form, with the only difference what order the necessary components get assembled in this time.
So, for the 2022 Mets it’s been:
- Convinced the stars have aligned and your team will go 162-0.
- The first galling loss of the season that leaves you fuming and then making excuses because hey, it was close.
- The first gut-punch loss of the season that leaves you wondering why you subject yourself to chronic pain.
So what would come Tuesday night against the Phillies? A range of possibilities presented themselves, from Illusory Return to Invulnerability to Suspicion That All Will Not Go Swimmingly to Fuck Me It’s Too Early to Get My Heart Stomped On Again. The Mets tried all of those on for size before settling on Well I Was Wrong the Whole Goddamn Time and You Know What That’s OK With Me.
An early 3-2 record is also a fraught moment, because what’s actually just one game in a very long parade is granted a thoroughly manufactured fork-in-the-road significance. If the result is a 4-2 record, you’ll talk yourself into believing that they’re rounding into form and the sky’s the limit; if the result is a 3-3 record, it’ll be clear that they’ll never get out of their own way and a summer of muddling awaits.
Adding to my emotional baggage was the fact that the man on the enemy mound was Zack Wheeler, the last mortal sin inflicted on the Mets by the dreadful Wilpons and their hired stooge Brodie Van Wagenen, a man who should be remembered more than he will be for his oily chiseling and crumminess. It was the Wilpons who let Wheeler walk instead of resigning him; it was Van Wagenen who obediently stuck the knife in Wheeler’s back after he accurately described the Mets’ conspicuous lack of interest in retaining his services. Wheeler followed up Van Wagenen’s sneer about parlaying two half-good seasons into $118 million by proving he was worth that contract and was exactly what the Mets sorely needed instead of turning to the likes of Jerad Eickhoff and Robert Stock as their playoff hopes drained away. It pissed me off then, it pisses me off now, it will piss me off a decade after Wheeler retires.
That said, Wheeler took the mound not at his best, having had an even more abbreviated spring training than everybody else. His velocity was down and his location was off; still, he had enough to match an energized Tylor Megill — whose simplified mechanics and winter off have made him look like a different pitcher — into the fifth. This unlikely tie in a bandbox ended when Brandon Nimmo hit a missile off his old teammate into the right-field seats, but then Megill departed after two trips through the Phillies’ order and it was time for the Mets to somehow find 11 outs.
They did so at first behind Chasen Shreve — who still looks like he’s been living under a bridge, in case you were worried — and Drew Smith, whose dewy cheeks still suggest puberty has yet to arrive. The arm is fully developed, though — Smith looked particularly impressive, using his entire arsenal in the seventh to retire Bryce Harper, Rhys Hoskins and Didi Gregorius while sidestepping a Nick Castellanos double.
The Mets took a 2-0 lead to the ninth, but Edwin Diaz was coming in with Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto and Harper coming up, and let’s just say my confidence was not elevated.
There’s a great moment in the (underrated) 2017 movie American Made in which Tom Cruise, playing a restless pilot mixed up with drugs and guns and other bad ideas, turns on his usual high-wattage charm to ask his wife if she trusts him.
“NO!” she responds instantly, offended that he’d even try it.
That’s me with Diaz, no matter what the stats might say. The enemy ninth had “walkoff with no outs recorded” flashing red in my mind, and part of me wanted to hide downstairs until the inevitable had come crashing down.
But Diaz’s slider was working, either because he’s made some adjustment (let’s say so, because why not) or because randomness was on our side tonight (let’s not think about this). He struck out Schwarber, gave up a bad-luck infield hit to Realmuto, struck out Harper, and then coaxed a ground ball from Castellanos, which Francisco Lindor snared in the hole and tossed over to Jeff McNeil at second. Except Realmuto is annoyingly fast for a catcher, and was safe. That meant Hoskins would bat with the tying run on first as the tying run, with Gregorius behind him, and why exactly hadn’t I hidden downstairs when I still could?
Throwing all sliders to Hoskins, Diaz worked the count to 1-2 and then buried a slider in the dirt — the classic call, but not enough to tempt Hoskins. What was next? The high fastball to change Hoskins’ eye level and speed up his bat? Sure, but Diaz had to throw it high enough so Hoskins couldn’t square it up, a plan he hasn’t always proved able to execute. So the slider, then? Sure, but Diaz needed to not throw one that flattened out and sat in the middle of the plate, destined to become a souvenir. String together enough of those moment-to-moment agonies and you have a baseball game, but this game was destined to come down to the outcome of that one particular agony.
Diaz opted for the slider and it was another perfect one, diving at the knee on the opposite side of the plate. Hoskins swung helplessly and missed and the Mets had won. Won, and taken the correct path after reaching that fork in the road, the one that leads to the sky being the limit.
You believe that, right?
by Greg Prince on 12 April 2022 12:21 am “Hit it to Alec Bohm” shaped us as the winning formula in Philadelphia Monday night. The Mets kept beleaguering the Phillies’ third baseman, grounding balls in his direction; compelling him to pick them up; and forcing him to do something with them. Errant throws ensued in such volume that he was henceforth to be known as beleaguered Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm. By the third inning, Bohm had three errors and the Mets had three runs. Although only one of the errors took place in an inning with runs, and although the runs were earned, the 3-0 Met advantage came across as a product of shoddy Phillie defense. “Don’t get defensive, Philadelphia,” was an early favorite of the hypothetical Banner Day judges.
Also by the third inning, Taijuan Walker had thrown two perfect innings. That, however, is where threes stopped being relevant. The Mets would have to move on to a second pitcher because Walker, whose knee gave him trouble in Spring Training, left with shoulder irritation. You’re familiar with the phrase “shoulder irritation”. It resides in that same instantly repeatable section of the baseball dictionary where a couple of weeks ago a million Mets fans simultaneous turned to define “scapula”. Now the secret words were shoulder irritation. Find cause to say it aloud and lose a starter for at least the rest of the night.
To our rescue came David Peterson, good-looking young pitcher from two years ago, less good-looking last year, reborn in the moment as a brilliant piggyback reliever. Peterson — who Ubered over from the taxi squad when Edwin Diaz went on bereavement leave — jumped on the back of Walker’s two zeroes and totaled four of his own. The Mets were up, 4-0, by the middle of the seventh, with James McCann having stolen everybody’s commodity, an insurance run. A catcher should get to do that now and then. After he ran the bases with tempered abandon and was rewarded for his efforts, James returned to his main job of catching pitching. The Mets were on their third pitcher at this point, Trevor May. May and McCann, a vaudeville team in the making if I’ve ever heard one, had their act together.
Formidable four-run Met lead. Largely faultless Met pitching. All that was left to do was take a generous sip of water and see how the game turned out.
(Excuse me while I wipe my desktop monitor dry.)
Trevor May stuck around to start the eighth. Apparently, he hadn’t stuck around for a second inning of work in all of 2021 when he pitched a lot, but always within the confines of one inning. Was it the right call? It’s hard to say, because May, after walking redemption-seeking Bohm, had to vacate the mound so as not to make his teammate Taijuan feel so all alone in injury purgatory. Trev & Tai: not as fun a combo as May & McCann, since the hurlers’ two right arms were linked in discomfort. Trevor’s deal was described as arm fatigue. It’s tired from not enough Spring Training, he suggested later. Not a big deal, he guessed. Walker didn’t think his situation was all that alarming, either. Pitchers know themselves until they don’t. Let’s hope they both feel swell, they both have MRIs that confirm best-case scenarios and neither finds himself grouped with Jacob deGrom in the one context where a pitcher wouldn’t crave the honor of Jake’s company. This here IL ain’t big enough for every Met arm in creation.
It’s not that you can’t have too much pitching. It’s that you can have too many innings. Based on recent samples, the eighth seems like an ideal one to eliminate. Sunday’s eighth yielded three Nationals runs. Monday’s eighth provided the Phillies with five. The math for a team that had scored two on Sunday and four on Monday would prove punishing. May to Joely Rodriguez to Seth Lugo added up to a 5-4 deficit not to be overcome when the Mets faced old acquaintance (I’d hardly call him a friend) Brad Hand. They’re on a two-game losing streak after riding a three-game winning streak. That cackle in the distance belongs to beleaguered Alec Bohm, proprietor of the last laugh until the next grounder flummoxes him.
by Jason Fry on 11 April 2022 12:27 am One of the earliest lessons for a baseball fan is that you cannot, in fact, win them all.
The Mets proved that to themselves and fans new and old Sunday afternoon, falling 4-2 to the Nationals. Squint a little and there was a lot to like, most importantly an encouraging performance by Carlos Carrasco, whose 2021 was undone by lingering injuries and then by a baffling failure to perform, problems which might or might not have been the same thing. On Sunday Carrasco looked much more like the inspirational figure who’d been a Cleveland favorite, giving up a solo homer to the ageless Nelson Cruz (a long-ago paper Met) and a single to Josh Bell in the first but nothing whatsoever after that. Francisco Lindor hit a solo homer of his own, hit machine Mark Canha drove in a run to put the good guys up 2-1, and we all waited for the Mets to follow that up with a big inning that put the Nationals away once again.
We waited, and it didn’t happen.
Instead, there were failures to move runners over and then a disastrous inning in which Chasen Shreve and Trevor Williams got three runs hung on them. That brought the season’s first second-guessing of Buck Showalter, whose Sunday included neither pinch-hitting for Robinson Cano or bringing in more front-line relievers than Shreve and Williams. But hey, Shreve got in trouble by giving up a hit to a lefty, a rare occurrence that confounded the percentage play, and Williams would have escaped unscathed if not for two lousy plays in the field by Pete Alonso, which cost the Mets an out at home plate and then a double play. Lest we be too hard on Pete, let’s remember his first-ever grand slam was not even 24 hours old when he was undone on defensive woes, and not do that.
The Mets won three out of four in Washington, an excellent blueprint they’re welcome to carry throughout the rest of the year. The starters have been pretty close to spotless and the relievers not bad at all. The hitters have ground their way through at-bats and delivered two-out hits a lot more frequently than previous incarnations of the team. Players and coaches and manager have shown proper fire and indignation in the face of probably accidental beanballs, which isn’t quantifiable but still something you like to see.
There are reasons to worry, beyond the spaces in between good things that got them in trouble on Sunday. Jacob deGrom is probably the key to the Mets’ season and likely to be MIA for some time, and the starters behind the superlative JdG carry worrisome amounts of injuries, mileage or inexperience on their resumes. But there are always reasons to worry — that’s as much a baseball lesson as the unfortunate inability to win them all. The Mets head for Philadelphia having won three of four and giving us reason to hope that may be more the rule than the exception, and whatever may lie ahead, that’s not a bad way to start a season.
by Jason Fry on 10 April 2022 10:50 am It’s an axiomatic to what we do here at Faith and Fear that the Mets are front and center in life for at least six months a year, with 1:10 pm and 7:05 pm the times around which calendars get constructed, not to mention all the oddball 10s and 05s on the clock necessitated by road trips, holidays and television-partner arrangements.
But “front and center” doesn’t always mean “to the exclusion of all else.” Sometimes the rest of life gets in the way, even at 7:05 pm and even when there’s yet another prized new starting pitcher to be formally introduced.
Saturday night was the Mets debut of Chris Bassitt, recently arrived from the Oakland A’s and having introduced himself to me with an endearingly blunt assessment of why he pays an agent. But when 7:05 pm came, my phone — now the key to all Mets interactions if I can’t be in front of a TV or in a stadium seat — had been pressed into service to play music for a fundraiser at a distillery up here in Connecticut.
It was spoken for and so was I, making conversation and being pleasant company. If this sounds like a hardship, sign me up for more of them — I was at a distillery and had all the fancy bourbon I wanted, not to mention enough cheeses, meats and miscellaneous dainties to supply an army. But after some conversation and listening to a couple of speeches, I noted that the room where my phone was playing music had emptied out and most everyone in the room with me had chosen their conversational partners.
So could I … I decided I could.
Technology’s march isn’t always a succession of triumphs — witness the mixed reviews for baseball on Apple TV+. (Personally, I liked the crisp graphics, disliked the dopey parade of probabilities and thought the announcers were pleasant enough but excessively gabby.) But SNY’s new app is a very good thing. Once you’ve verified you give money to a sanctioned TV provider, you can watch it wherever you like — even, Heaven forfend, within the holy blackout zones that reduce MLB.tv largely to a vehicle for late-night baseball tourism. The SNY app includes the Channel 11 games, and if you leave the area, you can watch for a month before it requires you to toe-tap back into your home turf.
All very reasonable, particularly given the usual draconian nonsense of blackouts and exclusive territories. Pair it with a modern iPhone and well, then you’re really cooking.
I turned off the music, flipped over to the SNY app and there were the Mets, in miniature but perfect HD. (On a phone! I felt like George Jetson!) It was the fifth inning, there was no score, and Francisco Lindor — who’d subtracted a bit of tooth enamel but added a newfound regard for his teammates — had just worked out a walk to load the bases. Up stepped Pete Alonso, whose propensity for long balls has made him an All-Star Derby icon nationwide and a rewriter of record books here at home, but whose resume was missing a grand slam — an oddity akin to, I don’t know, being a traveling magician who’s somehow never extracted a bunny from a hat.
As I and a couple of interested onlookers peered down at my phone, Pete connected off Joan Adon, about whom I knew nothing except that he must have done something right given the score. It wasn’t a majestic blast, attended immediately by disconsolate outfielders or souvenir seekers in distant precincts. Still, Pete seemed pretty pleased with himself, flipping his bat away as he departed for first and hopefully beyond.
Had he? I recalled Gary Sanchez flipping his bat away as a Twin newcomer, leaving home a self-anointed hero only to discover that Target Field’s dimensions aren’t quite as laughable as those of new Yankee Stadium, which meant he was the game’s final out. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to recall, but the mind of a worried Met fan specializes in such associations.
Not to worry. The ball plopped down over the fence, beyond Lane Thomas‘s ability to have a say in the matter. Alonso had his first grand slam and the Mets and Bassitt had a 4-0 lead.
Here, we’ll add an additional bit of spice. I was watching without sound, as the best way to get to keep flouting convention is to do so in moderation. But I’d forgotten that my phone was still in music mode, supplying audio to a Bluetooth speaker in the other room.
In that room was a teenaged kid who’d been pressed into service handing out goody bags to departing fundraiser guests. Said kid, it turned out, was a Mets fan, and had been following the game on his phone as best he could. So imagine his reaction when some bearded old guy shut off the old-people music and took his phone away, only to have Gary, Keith and Ron materialize out of the aether and begin describing wonderful things to an audience of one.
I saw a little of Bassitt, with my three-minute scouting report consisting of “about a million different pitches and a peculiar arm angle that looks like mechanical hell but apparently works.” I saw Met relievers including newcomer Joely Rodriguez comport themselves blamelessly after Bassitt’s departure. I saw Brandon Nimmo do some ninth-inning hitting and scampering to tack on an additional run. I did not see Met batters lying in the dirt or having to provide up-close negative reviews about stuff vs. pitchability to a Nationals audience.
And I saw the Mets win — for the third time in the new year and the Buck Showalter era. Or the Chris Bassitt era, the Joely Rodriguez era, the Travis Jankowski era, or the Wayne Kirby coaching first while presumably unaware that I own the Mets uniform pants he wore as a lithe big-league player decades ago era.
Define this era however you like. Celebrate it while it’s the stuff of perfection. That won’t last — it never does. I’ve learned that about baseball. But I’ve also learned that means you should bask in these stretches when all is in perfect alignment and as it should be. This is the good stuff, necessarily finite and perhaps all the more enjoyable for that.
by Greg Prince on 9 April 2022 11:06 am Nationals Park was a little dim, I heard over the car radio. The stadium bulbs weren’t firing as intended, so Friday night’s game wasn’t commencing when intended. Fine by me, having mistimed my errands and running late toward what I’d looked forward to both all day and since late November. Now I’d get to hear and maybe see the Mets of Max Scherzer and the Nationals of no longer Max Scherzer from the beginning, depending on local traffic and the bringing upstairs of groceries.
I brightened up with anticipation, only to have my enthusiasm flicker a tad once I got a gander at Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball. Oh, it looked sharp, as far I could tell. Our household is not equipped to go wide on a production of this nature, what with perfectly functional televisions that didn’t get their master’s degrees in advanced technology, so I was eyeballing an iPad for video. The chatter from the tablet convinced me WCBS should remain my audio for the evening. It wouldn’t sync with what I’d be glancing at, but I had Howie Rose and Wayne Randazzo painting the word picture. I’d have the iPad for visual amplification. And I’d have the TV on to follow the Nets, contesting the Cavaliers for play-in seeding (busy night).
This wasn’t how Max Scherzer’s First Start as a New York Met was drawn up. This should have been a full-focus event, preferably at Citi Field, definitely aired over SNY, ideally following Jacob deGrom’s Opening Day mastery with a bookend shutout or something close to it. Not too many weeks ago, deGrom and Scherzer pitched in the same Spring Training game. Jake went three, Max went six. It was one of the more scintillating exhibitions in St. Lucie history.
But those visions were history by Friday. However one was to consume this Met milestone, the important thing is that it was happening. And it certainly did. Max Scherzer gave the Mets six splendid innings. The Nats cobbled together one run in the second, and Josh Bell nailed him for a two-run homer in the fourth (he gives those up sometimes), but otherwise three runs for a first start — particularly after the hamstring alert that pinged in Florida — was plenty satisfying for Scherzer and us. Max managed the emotions of returning in a new uniform to the scene of so many previous triumphs quite professionally.
Professionalism is rampant with Buck Showalter in the dugout…and Buck Showalter purposefully out of the dugout.
Showalter’s major move Friday night should have been writing “SCHERZER” wherever pitchers are listed on lineup cards now that one can’t say “in the ninth place in the batting order”. Scherzer’s night turned out to be not primarily Scherzer’s night. He went his six, he got his win and he is officially a Met in reality, not just on paper or in Photoshop. Those are accomplishments.
Leading your team is an accomplishment, too. Max will do that in his way. Various players will do the same, if differently. And the manager? The manager is the man in whom we invest all sorts of leadership qualities, only to be told these days that, nah, a manager doesn’t do what you think he does. Decisionmaking is cooperative and collegial with the front office and its analytics people. Players aren’t managed so much as they are handled. So manage your managerial expectations and don’t pin on Buck as much blame as you pinned on his predecessors when something eventually goes wrong.
Yet I’m ready to credit Buck coming out of the gate here in 2022 because I heard — then saw — Buck come charging out of the dugout in the top of the fifth inning Friday night after Francisco Lindor was hit on the C-flap of his batting helmet with a rising fastball from Steve Cishek. Lindor was down on the ground in an instant. Showalter was on the field wanting to know “WTF?” in so many words an instant after that.
Four Mets had been hit in the first fourteen innings of the season. Showalter knew that. More Mets seem to be hit per capita than members of anybody else in the majors. Over the past four seasons, no team has taken more hits to the body, with the Mets taking 307 for the team between 2018 and 2021. Add in the three from Opening Night, then Lindor, and that adds up to too many. Only so many pitches can be chalked up to having simply “got away” from so many pitchers. We don’t mind the base the batsman is awarded. We’re fed up with how the batsman (or his pinch-runner) finds himself there.
Buck’s been the manager since December organizationally and since Thursday night practically. But you think he doesn’t know the epidemic proportions of HBPs to which the Mets have been subject? You think there’s anything relevant Buck doesn’t know? Friday night he knew it was time to say something, say it immediately and say it loudly.
The umpires listened. The players on both sides heard it. In a blink, everybody was on the field. Lindor, thankfully, was up on his feet and feeling (he said) no ill effects. No punches were thrown. Provocation was in the air. Bloodlust maybe not so much. The point was the Mets were sick of being human dartboards, no matter that the targeting may have been unintentional. Throw your pitches better, was Buck’s essential message to the Nationals. “I don’t really want to hear about intent,” Showalter elaborated afterward. “When you’re throwing up in there, those things can’t happen.” The man is so savvy, he can manage two teams at once.
I don’t believe Cishek was aiming at Lindor. I don’t believe any Nat was aiming at any Met the night before. I also believe you can’t just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and trot to first without at least one highly audible ahem. That’s what Showalter brought to the field. That’s what his players brought in support. “There’s not one guy I didn’t see,” Lindor said about being surrounded by so many Mets, “and I appreciate that. That, to me, shows unity.” The umpires interpreted the collective throat-clearing correctly. They tossed Cishek as an “aggressor” amid the hopped-up milling about (not so much for the actual pitch) and they sent ex-Met coach Gary DiSarcina, now in the Nats’ employ, to join Cishek in selling seashells by the seashore for what they judged pot-stirring motions. Showalter wasn’t ejected or told about asses in jackpots. Buck made a defensible baseball decision. He did the right thing.
Buck may not have been seeking ownership, but Friday indeed became Showalter’s night. He changed the tenor of the evening, the series, potentially the season. “I’m super proud to be a New York Met,” Lindor said later. The whole scene, once it appeared Francisco didn’t incur injury, was reassuring to process, whatever media platform one chose to absorb it via. No less reassuring was Scherzer — warned not to retaliate — going out for the bottom of the fifth and mowing the Nationals down on a dozen efficient pitches.
The Mets were leading before the dust coalesced; they were leading when the dust settled; and they led after the game that had at started at dusk and ended near midnight turned to dust destined to be put in the books (or iBooks). A ninth-inning downpour didn’t help MLB in its attempt to showcase whatever it was trying to prove with its streaming exclusive. The game may have looked sleek on devices worldwide, but baseball will take its sweet time when the lights won’t work, when the tarp comes out, when the teams have to be separated from one another, and when a new pitcher has to be called in to replace an ejected teammate. The Mets devoted a hefty share of the three hours and forty-three minutes it took to play this game — not counting fifty-two minutes of electrical and meteorological delays — scoring seven runs, using five separate innings to effectively grind their offense and post their tallies. That was pretty sweet, too.
Jeff McNeil celebrated his birthday with his and the team’s first home run of the season, blowing out the candles for three RBIs in all. Robinson Cano had a big hit. Starling Marte had a couple. The relievers who followed Scherzer — Drew Smith, Seth Lugo and Sean Reid-Foley — allowed no runs among them. We’d complain if they had, so we should acknowledge they didn’t. Oh, and the Nets beat the Cavs; Durant scored 36. (Like I said, busy night.)
The 7-3 victory sounded crisp on the radio because we have Howie and Wayne, and theirs is a crystal clear stream of accounts and descriptions, intermittent AM static notwithstanding. I would have liked the option of the usual Met-centered telecast, but it wasn’t there. Apple apparently wants to stamp these productions with their own talent, otherwise they might want to think about putting to good use announcers who are already in town, maybe pairing one of the available visiting voices with a home team counterpart, thus giving everybody who’s actually interested in the game the most pertinent insights available. It was the only good thing the mid-’90s debacle known as The Baseball Network ever tried (it even got Bob Murphy back on television for a few nights).
I don’t want to be totally dismissive of this effort to “grow the game”. Perhaps somebody was genuinely excited that Apple TV+ had the Mets-Nationals game on its app and perked up to the broadcasters they hired to call and comment on the action. Maybe I missed out on the ground floor of something historic — besides Max Scherzer’s first pitch as a Met while putting away paper napkins and kidney beans. I’m good with that. Again, I had Howie and Wayne. The supermarket where I did my pregame shopping sits around the corner from an evangelical church. They had a sign out front that said HE IS RISEN. No, I thought later, HE IS ROSE. And when it comes to the Mets, his word is gospel.
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